Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Tīġ-i cefāyile yüregüm pāre eyledüñ
Bir yare bitmeden daḫı bir yare eyledüñ
Yā Rab ḳara beñi bigi ol māhpārenüñ
Baḫtum sitāresini n’içün ḳara eyledüñ
Gül-gūn ḳabā geyüp yine ey serv gül gibi
Ṣabrum yaḳasını yine ṣad-pāre eyledüñ
Derdine çāre yoḳ dirimişsin bu zār içün
Daḫı ne çāre kim beni bīçāre eyledüñ
Yüzidür āfitāb Baṣīrī ne vechile
Mihr-i sipihr adını ruḫsāre eyledüñ

In English

1. With the sword of cruelty you cut my heart to pieces; before one wound had closed you opened another.

2. O Lord, why have you made the star of my fortune black, like the black mole of that moon-fair beauty? (Black fortune is ill luck; the beloved's black mole is also thought of as a star.)

3. O cypress-tall one, putting on a rose-coloured robe once more, you have, like a rose, torn the collar of my patience into a hundred pieces. (The blooming rose is likened to one who has torn his collar; the beloved's red robe tears the lover's patience to shreds.)

4. You said of this wailing lover, "there is no cure for his pain"; what remedy is left, when you have made me remediless?

5. O Basîrî, his face is the sun; on what ground did you give the name of the sky's sun to his cheek? ("Vech" means both face and ground, way. The couplet says that the beloved's face is the true sun, and that even giving it the name of the sky's sun falls short.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the muzâri family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The redif (refrain word) is "eyledüñ" (you made); the rhyme rests on the sound "-āre / -are": pāre, yare, ḳara, ṣad-pāre, bīçāre, ruḫsāre. The Turkish words "yara" and "ḳara" join the rhyme with a short vowel; the word "pāre" also rhymes twice, in the first and third couplets. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XLVII in Ahmet Kartal's edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

All the couplets of the ghazal are built as a reproach addressed to the beloved or to God; the redif "eyledüñ" lists in each couplet what the other has done. In the first couplet cruelty is a sword that cuts the lover's heart to pieces. The words "before one wound had closed, another wound" show wounds opened one upon another. In the second couplet the address turns to God. The beloved's face is a piece of the moon and his mole a black star beside that moon; the lover complains that the star of his own fortune is as black as that mole. The use of moon and star, white and black together gives the couplet a congruence of images (tenasüp).

The third couplet works a familiar image of divan poetry. When a rose opens its petals part, and this is likened to a lover tearing his collar. Basîrî turns the image round: the beloved who puts on a rose-coloured robe opens like a rose, but the collar that is torn is the collar of the lover's patience. "Ṣad-pāre", a hundred pieces, also recalls the hundred-petalled rose. The fourth couplet is built on the derivation (iştikak) between "çāre" (remedy) and "bīçāre" (remediless): the beloved has said there is no remedy for the lover's pain, but it is the beloved himself who has left him remediless.

In the last couplet the phrase "ne vechile" carries a double entendre (tevriye). "Vech" means both "way, ground" and "face"; the line can be understood both as "on what ground" and as "with what face". The beloved's face is already the sun; the poet asks himself how he gave the name of the sky's sun to his cheek. This question, which says that even likening the beloved to the sun does not do him justice, is a familiar way in divan poetry of expressing the inadequacy of comparison. With its short, plain couplets the ghazal may count as an example of the easy diction Çavuşoğlu attributes to Basîrî.

Bibliography

Online sources